Forever Odd

FORTY

DATURA, WHO HOBNOBBED WITH THE GRAY PIGS OF Haiti and observed seamstresses being sacrificed and cannibalized, had told me that the black button detonated, that the white disarmed.

In my experience, she had not proved herself to be a reliable source of dependable fact and unvarnished truth.

More to the point, the ever-helpful madwoman had volunteered this information when I had asked if the remote on the table might be the one that controlled the bomb. I couldn't think of any reason why she would have done so.

Wait. Correction. I could after all think of one reason, which was Machiavellian and cruel.

If by some wild chance I ever got my hands on the remote, she wanted to program me to blow up Danny instead of save him.

"What?" he asked.

"Gimme the flashlight."

I went around behind his chair, crouched, and studied the bomb. In the time since I had first seen this device, my subconscious had been able to mull over the tangle of colorful wiring-and had come up with zip.

This does not necessarily reflect badly on my subconscious. At the same time, it had been presented with other important tasks- such as listing all the diseases I might have contracted when Datura spat wine in my face.

As previously, I tried to jump-start my sixth sense by tracing the wires with one fingertip. After 3.75 seconds I admitted this was a desperation tactic with no hope of getting me anything but killed.

"Odd?"

"Still here. Hey, Danny, let's play a word-association game."

"Now?"

"We could be dead later, then when would we play it? Humor me. It'll help me think this through. I'll say something, and you tell me the first thing that comes into your mind."

"This is nuts."

"Here we go: black and white."

"Piano keys."

"Try again. Black and white."

"Night and day."

"Black and white."

"Salt and pepper."

"Black and white."

"Good and evil."

I said, "Good."

"Thank you."

"No. That's the next word for association: good."

"Grief."

"Good," I repeated.

"Bye."

"Good."

"God."

I said, "Evil."

"Datura," he said at once.

"Truth."

"Good."

I sprang "Datura" on him again.

At once he said, "Liar."

"Our intuition brings us to the same conclusion," I told him.

"What conclusion?"

"White detonates," I said, putting my thumb lightly on the black button.

Being Odd Thomas is frequently interesting but nowhere near as much fun as being Harry Potter. If I were Harry, with a pinch of this and a smidgin of that and a muttered incantation, I would have tossed together a don't-explode-in-my-face charm, and everything would have turned out just fine.

Instead, I pushed the black button, and everything seemed to turn out just fine.

"What happened?" Danny asked.

"Didn't you hear the boom? Listen close-you still might."

I hooked my fingers through the wires, tightened my hand into a fist, and ripped that colorful mare's-nest out of the device.

The small version of a carpenter's level tipped on its side, and the bubble slipped into the blast zone.

"I'm not dead," Danny said.

"Me neither."

I went to the furniture that had been stacked haphazardly by the earthquake and retrieved my backpack from the crevice in which I had tucked it less than an hour ago.

From the backpack, I withdrew the fishing knife and cut the last of the duct tape that bound Danny to the chair.

The kilo of explosives fell to the floor with a thud no louder than would have been produced by a brick of modeling clay. Boom-plastic can be detonated only by an electrical charge.

As Danny got up from the chair, I dropped the knife into the backpack. I switched off the flashlight and clipped it to my belt once more.

Freed of the obligation to puzzle out the meaning of the bomb wires, my subconscious was counting off the elapsing seconds since I had fled the casino, and being a total nag about the situation: Hurry, hurry, hurry.